


The volume is rising, so you'd better hold on

by Anonymous



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Masturbation, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-17 16:45:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9333932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: In which Kingsman is a knighthood of omegas, and alpha!Merlin is having a bad week.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mm8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mm8/gifts).



"It's not just a question of dosage. It's a matter of cumulative effects." The doctor sweeps down the list of numbers from Merlin's bloodwork, tapping each one she dislikes. "You've been on this suppressant for, what, twenty years? More? It may have been the best option at the time, but it's not designed to be continued long term, and frankly there are better alternatives on the market."

Merlin takes the clipboard, scrolling slowly. 

"I'll give you a tapered dosage, but your body needs to flush this out before you try anything else. I'd recommend you allow at least one full cycle, preferably more, and then we'll see where we are."

Theoretically, suppressants are designed to suppress only the peaks of an alpha or an omega's reproductive cycle. In practice anyone prescribed them is encouraged to take breaks every year or two, to allow their bodies to recalibrate. But alpha pheromones are not an asset in Merlin's work - inconducive to gaining the trust of many different highly suspicious omegas - and Merlin has not gone off suppressants since a memorable mission of Harry's and the former Percival's had run into difficulty at exactly the wrong time and necessitated Merlin coordinating radio signals and escape plans and trying not to ejaculate while audible over comms.

He wasn't looking forward to the work disruption, but he can plan for it. His body surprises him. The leadup to his rut is half familiar, but even the familiar aspects were out of sync after so long. He is less hungry. He is more angry. He can smell himself, and watches the flare of his colleagues nostrils too. Harry's glance is cool, assessing.

Eggsy, grinning, leans in for a sniff, and Merlin laughs, open hand over Eggsy's face to push him back. 

The full drive takes longer to build up than it did once- there are a few days of false starts, of almost but not quite, of waking drenched in sweat only to shiver on waking. Urges, sexual and otherwise, encroach on the forefront of his mind and then retreat, disrupting his thoughts. His head hurts, and his testicles are tender enough that he has to take care sitting down.

Finally he retreats to one of the seclusion rooms, and locks the door.

By afternoon of the first day he can smell nothing but his own sweat and ejaculate. It's viscerally satisfying, in an atavistic way, to indulge so very physically in himself, to be surrounded in his own scent. Like an animal, in its den.

An animal without a mate.

He rolls, feeling the friction of naked skin against the impossible thread count of Kingsman's sheets. He would prefer to remain on an animal level, without thought - Of Harry, who views him as some sort of animal indeed, occasionally leashed enough to befriend, but not to allow close. Of Eggsy, who's so bloody earnest, and far too bloody young. Merlin will think of them when he can *think* again.  
Right now he just wants to _fuck_ something. 

Coming out of rut is unpleasant. Merlin's body is a mess of deep muscle aches, and his head is pounding from dehydration. He's glad for the water left within reach of the bed. 

He drinks, but the cold water feels foreign, and sits uneasily. He drinks again, slower. Lets the water warm in his mouth before swallowing. After a bit he makes his way to the loo, turns on the shower and slides down the wall to sit under the spray. The hot water makes him feel nearly human, but drags his exhaustion to the fore, and he's in danger of falling asleep and ignominiously drowning himself. Drying himself makes him conscious of sensation, oddly over-aware of the terrycloth of Kingsman's huge bath sheets.

The room has a full med kit, equipped for the needs of agents and operatives in season, and Merlin hangs the saline bag from a discreet hook beside the headboard. The vein is harder to find than usual, and he lets his head fall back against the bed once it's in. 

Eggsy knocks on the door in the early afternoon. Merlin weighs it. This is not an image he wants to project. But Eggsy seems, genuinely, to care. Merlin will take the risk.

"Fucking hell, Merlin, you look like shit."

Merlin clenches his hand, feels the pull of the drip site, the pressure of the shifting muscles against the needle. "Not what a man wants to hear when they're being stared at in the nude."

Eggsy winces. His eyebrows are a worried little furrow, face scrunched up until he's starting to resemble JB. "Not like that. You're well fit, but you look fucking rough. D'you need medical?"

"I'll stop there later." Beyond the dehydration, and the headache that comes as consequence of the hormonal surge and retreat, there's nothing to treat. Next time will be easier.

"C'n I do anything?" 

Eggsy's body sways towards him, and Merlin's skin is as desperate for touch as his body is desperate for water.

"Give us a hug?" 

"Yes, Merlin." Eggsy's exasperated pleasure is a lovely thing, and he slides into Merlin's arms and presses close.

Holding him eases Merlin's comedown. Scientifically, a number of beneficial neurochemicals are released by skin contact, especially alpha-omega. And that matters. But Merlin has not held anyone in a long time, and in a fallible, human way he feels better simply having Eggsy there to give a damn about him. 

The saline IV empty and disposed of, Merlin rests his nose against Eggsy's hair, and breathes him in. His penis remains thankfully quiescent against his thigh. Eggsy's arm is heavy across Merlin's belly, hand curled over Merlin's side, cheek warm in the cup of Merlin's shoulder. He muffles an indistinct happy noise in Merlin's skin, and Merlin shuts his eyes and hums in answer.

***

Kingsman was created of the remnants of rich houses after World War I, alpha sons gone to war and lost. Kingsman was built on the strength of omegas, a defiance of tradition, recruiting only the best.  
That Harry Hart is an omega is an aspect of his physicality, and determines nothing of his choices in life but what he allows it.

He allows it to mean very little. 

Harry spent his younger years being socialised to look after those around him, to placate them, to be pleasant and good. He has since spent every moment of his life as a Kingsman being pleasant and gentlemanly exactly as far as he chooses, no further. He is, at baseline, neither pleasant nor good, and he enjoys fighting, enjoys killing, far more than he has ever wanted to _take care_ of people the way society and his former peers intended. He has, perhaps, slightly more latent anger than is helpful, but he is exceptionally good at turning it into an asset, never a liability.  
Saving the world is a very different kind of caring.

What being omega means to Eggsy is something utterly other than what it means to Harry. For all the vagaries of his situation at home, for all the brittle edges of his street persona, Eggsy has no quarrel with his body, no shame in being omega. He reaches out to people- his sister, his mother, Roxy Morton, Merlin, Harry himself- not from any sense of societal expectation but simply because he cares. Kingsman stands as near a century of proof that omegas are not required to be nurturing by nature. But Eggsy is. Harry has yet to be certain if it is a weakness or a strength.

It is not prurience, Harry tells himself, that makes him call up the internal monitoring on the seclusion room Merlin is staying in. Caution, curiousity perhaps. Merlin's scent, fully present again after so long, has been sparking his memories for days. He remembers the beat of bright, hard music through heavy speakers, the tang of smoke blending into the smell of sweat, musky and alpha. The nip of that angled front tooth, set at his throat.

Harry sits back from the desk, his spine a relaxed curve. His throat is warm with whiskey but he still tastes Merlin's scent on the roof of his mouth. He taps, twice, and the feed from Merlin's room is pulled up once more. He watches Eggsy wrap himself around Merlin, watches the angle of Eggsy's body, the way Merlin bends to take in his scent, and Eggsy arches to let him. 

He sets down his glass.

***

The feed plays on, set to record now to Harry's private servers, outside even Kingsman's reach. On the screen, Harry folds his suit jacket and waistcoat over the back of the chair and toes out of his shoes. Merlin and Eggsy, still half curled together, open outwards as he joins them on the bed.


End file.
